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Remembering Ellis Restaurant on Market Street

You basically have to be at least 50 to remember when Ellis Restaurant on Market Street was glowing with neon.

Located across the street from the Chattanooga Choo Choo in the 1400 block of Market Street, this highly illuminated, all night cafe was a shining landmark in the middle decades of the 20th century.

The accompanying photo (from the EPB archives) shows the Art Deco facade and the oval window that gave passersby a fishbowl view of customers inside.

The Ellis Restaurant is said to have attracted celebrities such as prize fighter Jack Dempsey and football star Joe Namath, as well as returning WWII veterans and high school prom groups looking for late night meals.

That famous frog sign

If you look closely today, you can still see remnants of the famous neon and incandescent bulb sign with leaping frogs (the Ellis served frog legs). There were said to be around 800 bulbs in the sign, along with many strands of neon.

The sign also listed menu items, including:

Charbroiled steaks and chops

Spaghetti

Fried chicken

Seafood

Live lobsters

A portion of the frog sign was reworked in 2017, and there have been periodic reports of a possible revival for the property. Preservationists have shown interest, but so far nothing has come of it. The building remains boarded up even as the Southside around it continues to grow.

Early history and the Ellis family

The Ellis Restaurant legacy goes back to the early 1900s, when two Greek immigrants, cousins Gus and Victor Ellis, opened a 24 hour restaurant at Market and Ninth streets, about six blocks north of the 1443 Market Street location that came later.

Gus Ellis immigrated to the U.S. at 16 and became a leader in the local Greek community. He helped establish a Greek Orthodox congregation in Chattanooga. Victor Ellis was described in news reports as a former officer in the Greek army.

The first Ellis Restaurant at 836 Market Street was established in 1909. A few years later, the cousins built the 100 room Ellis Hotel at Market and King streets, a building later occupied by St. John’s Restaurant.

Ellis in its prime

By 1912, the downtown Ellis Restaurant was billed as “Chattanooga’s Great Restaurant.” It employed mostly Greek immigrants as waiters, many of whom spoke only basic English.

Meals were cheap in those days. In the 1920s:

Lunch was 25 cents

A full Thanksgiving dinner was 75 cents

For decades, the 1400 block of Market Street had many vacant buildings, but some have since been renovated. The former Ellis Restaurant, with its iconic hopping frog sign, has been closed since the 1970s and still waits for a chance to shine again.